Letters To Bourdain

Dear Chef Bourdain;

Bad news, chef. Julia Child took you out by a hair.  It was a good fight, you hung in there until the very last round, and for a while you even had her up on the ropes. But in the end, she has some secret weapons on her side that were the telling edge. It should come as little surprise that one of those secret weapons was bacon. (The other was mushrooms.)

Actually, Chef, the whole start of this exercise was my astonishment that your boeuf bourgignon recipe didn’t involve any mushrooms or bacon. It was my understanding that these were fundamental elements to the recipe – that otherwise it was just a beef fricasee in red wine. I conferred with “Mastering The Art of French Cooking” after reading your recipe, and sho’ nuff, Julia says mushrooms and bacon.  So I thought – heck, let’s try them both and see how it turns out.

Given that I was setting out to make two fairly lengthy dishes, I took special care to get my meez straight. Remember kids – don’t fuck up your meez.

Master Yoda says, "Fuck up your meez not, young chefi."

I decided to start with yours first, since the stew reheats well, I figured it really didn’t matter if I was done early and had to let them sit for a while and wait for my guest judges to assemble. Actually, I tell a lie – I got up early and started on the rassa frassa simmered pearl onions for Chef Child’s recipe. But once those were done and set aside, I set to on the Les Halles recipe.

First, brown the meat. In batches, like you say. I worried that maybe my impatience meant I wasn’t really browning the meat enough, and not giving it enough of a nice crisp texture when finished. But looking at this picture? Nah, that was some gorgeous meat right there. (I hear that a lot, Chef, by the by.)

Why don't we just eat it like this?

I had a gajillion onions sliced already, so I just finished it up as you instruct – brown the onions, add the meat, add the burgundy, water, and two large spoonfuls of demi-glace. Bring to boil, then simmer.

Resist eating it for three hours while it simmers.

Your instructions say to let it summer for two-three hours until it’s fork-tender. It actually took me closer to four hours to get that tender. Also, I did some research and found that paleron is the same thing as chuck roast.  So that’s the meat I used. I couldn’t find a decent burgundy that wasn’t incredibly expensive, so I used a bourdeaux instead. In retrospect, I’d probably use dark stock instead of water the next time I make this, too.

Now, while this was happily simmering on the stove top, I had to do the competition’s bourgignon. This was considerably more effort – I had to boil bacon, then brown bacon, then remove it, then brown the beef in batches, then brown the onions, then pour off excess fat and add the beef, then mix in some flour – then in the oven at high heat for four minutes, then toss it, then in the oven for four minutes again, then add stock and wine on the stove top, boil, back in the oven at a simmer. In the mean time, sautee mushrooms. When it’s finally done, you separate the sauce and the beef, add the mushrooms and onions to the beef, skim the fat off the sauce, then put it all together and simmer it on the stovetop again. Sheesh. And while all this is going on, fend off Assistant Chef Bourdain, who is ever-ready to sneaky-snake something off the counter top if I don’t watch him.

Assistant chef he may be, but he is sneaky-snake-in-cheif.

You might find this shocking, Chef, but it wasn’t hard to find some judges to help us decide which was better. We had guest judges from as far away as Boston, from as far North as Simi Valley, as far out as Rancho Cucamunga, and as far South as Costa Mesa. It wasn’t hard to find people more than willing to sit down to some hot beef stew on a cold and rainy night. We get one or two of those a year, and this was one of them. We also lubricated them with the wine we didn’t cook, plus a couple of more bottles contributed to the cause by the guests. Suffice to say, they were feeling pretty hungry, pretty cheerful, and pretty cozy when they sat down to the serious business of our blind taste-test.

I gave them a spoonful of each, one in a bowl and one on the plate so we could tell the difference. The results were 5-3 in favor of Julia Child – but everyone admitted it was a pretty close call no matter what. Julia’s recipe just uses “stew meat” and a cheap, dry, young red – chianti, for instance. So if we’d used better beef she might have done even better. On the other hand, quite a few people said “This is what I expect bourgignon to taste like, but this one is better” – meaning yours had that classic taste. Personally, I had to give it to Julia Child, because of the bacon and the mushrooms. I do notice that you use a lot of onions in your bourgignon, whereas she uses only one, and keeps the pearl onions separate until the end. I think the acid of the onions in yours makes the beef more tender, in addition to smelling amazing while it cooks.

But the truth is, yours was a lot easier to make, and I think that’s the heart of bistro-style cooking –  make it simple, make it fast, and make it good. Strip your dishes down to their bare essentials. So when I make boeuf bourgignon again, I think I’ll use the Les Halles method, and just add in a bit of bacon and mushrooms. I’d bet my pancreas that if I made yours that way, it would have won decisively.

Take some consolation, Chef. You might have lost the smackdown – and honestly, Julia Child was an OSS operative and no retiring lily, I’d expect her to work you like side of beef if you’d actually faced her in the ring – she had years of clean living, CIA training and exercise while you were scoring smack and snorting coke. She’d push you around like a G8 protestor, man. But there was one clear winner in this contest, and that was us, the folks that got to sit down and judge it.

I learned a lot about cooking yesterday, and I got to share a good meal with good friends. The space around the table was satisfied and companionable, and even the dog replete with the scraps that were his righteous due once they hit the floor. That’s the thing about learning to cook – the better I get, the happier the people in my  life end up. And for that, I thank both you, and Julia Child.

We’re all winners in that contest, Tony!

Yours;

Davy

Dear Chef Bourdain;

Mushrooms. Clearly one of the most glorious things to come from poop. Unless, I suppose, you have certain unspeakable predilections, but even in that case I’m guessing you’d still prefer this amazing mushroom soup. This is what The Good Book is best at – simple recipes with a few ingredients that end up just amazing.

I regret only that this soup doesn't have a fancy French name.

Mushrooms are like a secret weapon; they seem kind of humble and uninteresting, but they combine with other stuff to become pretty magical. The earthy, rich flavor, that beautiful savory toothsomeness. I know this whole umami thing is really trendy, but there’s some truth to it, some of the most gorgeous things to eat involve a lot of this flavor. And mushrooms bring it, and then some.

Per your directions, I sauteed onions in butter until the onions were translucent, and threw in the mushrooms. If these pictures look better than the ones I used previously, it’s because now I’ve got a really professional camera, instead of just relying on my iPhone, by the way.

Stuff in a pot. Thrilling!

Next they simmered with chicken stock and flat parsley for about an hour. I had to cheat on the chicken stock – I’m all out of the stock I made back on Stock Day, so I had to use the boxed kind. I’m sure it would have been better with real stock- your forward is quite correct about that – good stock makes for good soup. Or you know, whatever you’re putting your stock into. If I’d had some chicken demi-glace, this would have been a perfect place to use it, too. But I don’t. I’m remedying this even as I write this letter – there’s a pot of stock going on the hob, and when it’s done I’m going to save off half of it to make demi-glace with. Anyway, even with the store bought stock, it was lovely. Maybe it’s best I didn’t have the good stuff, I’m not sure I deserve soup that good.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...

It reduced more than I expected while simmering, so in the future I’ll probably increase the batch size. But after an hour, I took it off and did it in batches in the blender, making sure not to shoot boiling hot mushroom goop all over my kitchen and self. As amusing and “my life as a comedy” appropriate that would surely have been to everyone but me, I’m happy with not ending the year with my skin melted off in an umami volcano.

Seen here: all the ingredients for slapstick genius

I put the results back on to simmer with some sherry. Your stern imprecations not to use cheap sherry aside, that’s all I had. And even that has lasted about a gajillion years. I know, I know, in an ideal world I’d send the butler out to go fetch me a bottle of the 1897 Chateau de ste domaine le pretense (I hear that was a very good year for pretension), but this is the real world. Cheap sherry it was. I don’t think it mattered. Even with store bought stock and cheap sherry, this was a gorgeous bowl of soup. It was creamy and toothsome and delicious – but without any cream. This was mildly amazing, so few of these recipes don’t have heavy cream. In fact, MLF didn’t believe it didn’t have cream in it, it has that silky, hearty flavor to it. But nope, cream-free. (There’s more than enough butter to compensate though, this is hardly health-food.) I had it with a little white truffle oil drizzled on top, and a couple of slices of fresh-baked bread. Just the thing to fortify me for a night’s New Year celebration!

I hope your 2011 is great Chef, I don’t doubt mine is going to be delicious!

Davy

Dear Chef Bourdain;

For Christmas I served a crown roast of pork. I used a recipe I found from Gourmet Magazine. It was made with a marjoram and sage stuffing – but I modified that to go along better with sauce bearnaise by using thyme and tarragon instead. I also repeated your gratin dauphinoise.

Why does this pork have a crown? Hail to the king, baby.

But the real triumph was the bearnaise. I corrected my previous mistakes; for Christmas I got a metal mixing bowl, and I used that in a properly simmering double-boiler. Also, I chopped the shallots much finer, though maybe using the food processor was a bit of a cheat. Actually, I can chop an onion or a shallot pretty quickly now, so I feel like I’ve learned something there, too.

I was ably assisted by Dummy The Cat, who reminded me over and over again what’s become my catch-phrase in this project – “Don’t fuck up the meez.” I mean, when you’ve got a cat poking her nose in your prep, you make extra sure that it’s all measured out and safely stowed. As a result, I was able to pull off dinner for 12, never lose my cool, and keep the kitchen basically neat while working. So much so that Dummy’s predations were minimized, and when MLF got home from visiting family, she said, “Wow. Everything actually looks pretty clean.” Chef – I did not fuck up my meez.

Assistant to assitant-chef Bourdain.

Anyway, the bearnaise came out just perfectly. The egg yolks never got close to curdling, and the sauce thickened up as beautifully as could be with the butter. It was a gorgeous emulsion, and it kept in a thermos for an hour and than another few hours on the table without breaking. This morning we had a little leftovers, and the sauce was still firm and delicious. It was well received at the table, too. I don’t have the greatest experience with bearnaise in the world, but it was easily the best I’ve had, anyway.

People seemed quite taken with the dolphinnoise, too, which I jazzed up with a little bit of white truffle oil.  Unlike last time, I put the herbs in a sachet – which you don’t call for in your recipe, but makes fishing them out after boiling the potatoes in cream quite a bit easier.

So in short, the stuff I made that came from elsewhere was good but not fantastic, whereas everything out of the good book was really excellent. I didn’t make anything I hadn’t tried before, but like you said, I’m going to fuck up the bearnaise the first time, so just try it again. And lo – it worked! Somehow we squeezed 12 people into our little house for Christmas dinner – but the crowd wasn’t a burden, but a pleasure. Somehow this big family is all really close. No one fights, they all sit down to share genuine affection, love and…dare I say it? Joy. Yes, joy. What goes better with joy than pork, cream, butter, and cheese, I ask you?

Nothing chef. Nothing at all. I hope your Christmas was just as merry – I’m sure your dinner was!

Merry Christmas;

Davy